the Sturgill Simpson c/d

Someday I'm gonna lock myself up for an entire weekend and trace how we got from the very vibrant musicality of the 80s (and every decade before them) to what happened in the 90s and beyond where everything got really blocky and cut-and-paste with numbing cadences and geometrically square bass lines. Started with Nirvana and Garth Brooks, moved into Weezer and post-Weezer rock and Shania Twain, took hold in teen pop boom at the end of the 20th century, and then Coldplay and OneRepublic oozed it all over everything since.

I've definitely been similarly bothered by these standards in pop music approach and production. It's the kind of approach and sound that instantly takes me to a grocery store in the suburbs, or the music/movie department of a Walmart, or a Ford commercial break during an episode of House Hunters. And like reality show editing/production, there is a distinct formula that is designed to be as unchallenging as possible to whatever excessive degree necessary.

that's not the approach in The Chainsmokers, Drake, and Panda.

"Panda" rather

Am I to understand there is currently some pop group called the Chainsmokers

Varies per artist of course

I'm saying – I hope I'm not being a dick – that current pop doesn't really sound like car commercials, and when I hear The 1975 in a VW commercial I wonder why more pop on Y-10 doesn't sound like VW commercials.

Certainly if a particular artist has nothing else redeemable about them cookie cutter production becomes a bigger distraction, and it's the landfill that I'm referring to as the worst offenders. So many of them sound like they're being groomed to the point that they aren't part of genre as much as they are just being targeted towards a demographic instead and don't actually sound that much different from each other because of the formulas JF touched on.

the new sturgill album was such a huge bummer for me, loved the last one's kinda cool late 60s private press stoner country vibe and this was is just fucking barf to me self conscious tom waits rips and "important" elvis gloop and shit, just lifeless as fuck compared to meta-modern sounds which staked out some really cool territory in alt country

i'd have to know more of what you're talking about in re. "cookie cutter production". there's a lot of music out there, a lot of pop music. in any era there's bad and there's good. it seems weird to say something like "90s pop music sucked" or whatever. that's using a very broad brush.

all the criticisms evan is making are very similar to criticisms made in the 1990s, 1980s, 1970s, 1960s and probably every decade previous.

I'm trying to think of Hot 100 charting pop that sounded like Weezer.

all the criticisms evan is making are very similar to criticisms made in the 1990s, 1980s, 1970s, 1960s and probably every decade previous.

― wizzz! (amateurist), Tuesday, August 30, 2016 11:05 AM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

True there's just a particular 2000s version of it I hear in the production that JF described as "in the 90s and beyond where everything got really blocky and cut-and-paste with numbing cadences and geometrically square bass lines."

i don't know how that applies to miranda lambert or ashley monroe or brandy clark or angaleena presley tbh, among others. there's not much ordinary about any of them and i don't think simpson's sound is so extraordinary and *real* in comparison.

or Eric Church and Brad Paisley

I wasn't really personally commenting on how it may or may not relate to those particular artists, was more broadly responding to JF's post.

I'm with upper mississippi sh@kedown, the new sturgill album was such a let down.

I'm trying to think of Hot 100 charting pop that sounded like Weezer.

I bet you won't find any. It's more about the approach to constructing a pop song, in a very rigid manner, than it is about how fuzzy the guitars are.

hook, pre-chorus,chorus!

what else do you need

I'm not even talking about the parts. I'm talking about how they reach those parts.

I know I'm incapable of accurately verbalizing my complaint in any coherent matter because, like I said upthread, I only know the bare mins re: music theory.

There's just a stiffness in songwriting now, not just rock, pop, and country, that didn't used to be there when everything was written out of jamming/live playing instead of being jammed into 4/4 bars in Pro Tools for easier post-production. I don't know if technology is completely to blame, or if people just became less interested in the swinging looseness popular music used to have, but too much stuff sounds like it was written with the metronome as the starting point and built outwards.

jammed into 4/4 bars in Pro Tools for easier post-production

digital editing is def the culprit of the phenomenon you're discussing imo

when everything was written out of jamming/live playing

i don't think that was ever the case in pop music.

if you're talking more about recording than writing, which you might be, then it should be noted that bands were recording to click tracks long before digital editing existed, and long before the '90s came around to apparently ruin everything.

recording to click tracks long before digital editing existed

these are two v different things imo

true. i'm just not clear on how working in protools forces artists to be any more or less swinging or loose than working with click tracks.

oh for the days when Script Politti and Kraftwerk jammed in the studio

hey those early Kraftwerk records are really good

I like the Script Politti stuff there they are more like pop group or the slits

People have been talking about Nashville going to hell since Patsy Cline added strings.
Zzz.

The great Jimmie Helms expressed it well in 1978:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El9UwK9U4Z4

And Inventor of Outlaw Country James Marvell of the Country Cavaleers took a synoptic approach to country's identity crisis in 1981. I know Sturgill has heard this groundbreaking--and breathtakingly arrogant--single, because a copy lies buried in the Country Music Hall of Fame:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tRUkSOafYA

Slave to the metronome and editing pencil tool is the bane of pretty much everything from pop to country to death metal.

It's been going on a while, I remember an article about Clint Black from quite a few years ago talking about him building up everything via MIDI by himself in the studio.

Pop country should probably been pushing more Merle Haggard as that tune he did with Willie from last year "Gone to Pot" would have been a big hit back in the 80s, but in a way, Simpson doesn't really have anything to with that stuff anyway. Dude's more like Wilco than Miranda Lambert when you get down to it. Pop country is about making money, fxxx art, it's just when Billy Sherrill was doing it, the music was still good.

cool opinions

Dude's more like Wilco than Miranda Lambert when you get down to it

colorless?

No Depression fans vs. Bro Country

i think country is probably stronger than it's been in a long, long time. the pistol annies albums (and each member's solo albums) have kinda led the charge for me but i also have a soft spot for little big town, jason eady, brandy clark, kacey musgraves, lindi ortega, and a few songs here and there from some others. i can't claim to be an expert on the genre at this point, i think i spread myself a bit thin across genres to focus on any one, but i will say the albums i've listened to most over the past year (after 'art angels') were probably 'the blade' and 'platinum'.

The industry viewpoint.

"Where would Sturgill Simpson be without Nashville?"

Counterpoint: He could have gone to Austin/Memphis/New Orleans and perhaps have been just as successful.

Counterpoint: He could have gone to Austin/Memphis/New Orleans and perhaps have been just as successful
Just as successful, I don't think so. Somewhat successful--a live act people liked who made seoond-tier Americana records for the faithful--maybe. I mean I don't buy into the let's-give-credit tone to the Tennessean piece, that's just the way people think in Nashville. He ain't on country radio even coming outta Nashville and he sure wouldn't be had he matriculated from the above cities, seems to me.

so... I like his cover of Slim Slow Slider. His voice really fits the song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRYnLbstn5g

Thing I think is that Sturgill's fans are really more rock and roll folk than country pop people. I'm sure there are plenty of Nashville fans of the arty persuasion that get into Gillian Welch or Buddy Miller digging Simpson, but I don't think he really is apart of the big blonde hair and songs about beer and bonfires folk buying his records.

By comparison, Dale Watson's beef with Nashville to be is a bit more legit in a way, as he was apart of the label system and he had the old codifiers down cold yet was spurned. My parents that saw Buck Owens, Dolly with Porter and the Johnny Cash show with the Statler Brothers courting in the 60s and really like Watson's music they have heard. Dale Watson has that old sound down cold. Watson perhaps kinda feels he got robbed of picking up that mantle, so I can see his beef is a bit more legit in a way perhaps in a way Simpson's is not. Both make cool tunes to me, just discussing the politics of country music business.

It kinda sucks that magazine dissed Merle, but they probably didn't figure on him dying either in hindsight. The big country station in this part of KY plays mostly old stuff just like classic rock radio with smattering of the big hair stuff. Being that Simpson is a local guy, you would 'think' he would perhaps fit into programming but shit man that stuff is probably decided in LA or Mumbai by aggregate databases.

One son of a redneck reporters opinion...

the merle thing... that happens all the time in journalism... a reporter or even editor promises you a cover, there's a last-minute editorial change. it happens, it's a little crummy, but it doesn't seem like synecdoche for nashville's corruption or something. it could happen anywhere. in any milieu.

but a lot of sturgill's criticisms of the country-music establishment seem a bit in bad faith, in part for the reasons earlnash describes.

the merle thing... that happens all the time in journalism... a reporter or even editor promises you a cover, there's a last-minute editorial change. it happens, it's a little crummy, but it doesn't seem like synecdoche for nashville's corruption or something. it could happen anywhere. in any milieu.

yeah that has nothing to do with nashville or the country music establishment at all. and it does happen. but it's still wrong, assuming they made a promise, did an interview based on that promise, and then broke it without telling anyone. that's wrong and shitty no matter how common it might be.

Would think Sturgill and his ilk benefit quite a bit from playing with / rebelling against Nashville's confines/conservatism almost like Madonna did/does w/r/t Catholicism.

David Cantrell's excellent response. I can't recommend his Haggard bio more highly either

David Cantwell's piece does a good job of placing Haggard in the context of country-music history. He offers a solution to Sturgill's problem with Nashville, which is to have modern singer place Haggard in the the context of the past. He says: "For that to happen, though, musicians from all parts of the country music business are going to have to make Merle’s old songs sound brand new for a new generation of fans."
But how would this happen? Cantwell: "That’s how the country tradition, Merle Haggard included, almost always worked. The trick is not to make the new music sound like the old music. It’s to let the music change, often drastically, while doing the work to keep it connected to all that tradition that’s come before."
So who's "doing the work" to link modern country to "all" this tradition? Miranda lambert? Kacey, Brandi, Tomi, Lori, Ashley, or Nikki Lane and Elizabeth Cook and Aubrie Sellers? Or Sturgill and Jamey Johnson? Does singer-songwriterdom, the Eagles, Seger-Fogerty-John Cougar-Fleetwood Mac, et al, constitute the real "past" of country music now? And teen pop? What binds country to the work of past producers like Billy Sherrill or Jack Clement or Jerry Kennedy these days, beyond retro, as in the case of Americana--Daniel Romano. Finally, what does David Cantwell mean by "tradition"? Sonic tradition, songwriting tradition? Or the tradition of the opposition between roots and expansion his piece lays out?
Great piece, and it certainly makes me want to go further into all this.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/arts/music/sturgill-simpson-grammy-nominations.html?_r=0

Adele, Beyoncé, Drake, Justin Bieber…Sturgill Simpson?

Bewilderment was the first reaction of many this morning as the Grammy Awards announced its nominees for Album of the Year, pitting four of the most culturally and commercially dominant pop stars of this era against Mr. Simpson, 38, a critically respected but little-known country outsider.

...Are those albums that you’ve listened to?

I loved ‘Lemonade.’ I thought it was genius. I love the Adele record. I really, really wish, honestly, and no [expletive] — I would’ve liked to see Frank Ocean’s name where mine is. But that’s not my place to say. I totally understand [his protest]. I just thought that record [‘Blonde’] was really groundbreaking. I listen to just about everything except country music, so it’s strange.

He's this year's Bon Iver or Beck maybe (surprise Grammy nominee for big award)

quote is pretty pandering afaic. It's like when someone gives you a birthday gift and you're all "you shouldn't have!" even though you know they're not gonna be all "oh, ok, give it back then." Just seems like a gross, hollow-ass gesture to me (and a bit social climb-y to boot).

I just thought that record [‘Blonde’] was really groundbreaking.

wtf does this even mean? I mean, outside of its context in the Spin Alternative Record Guide or some dumb shit

yeah i think the new album is gloppy dross too, no wonder it's getting more attention that the fine little should've-been-private-press psych-country gem that the previous one was

country outsider.

I wish I could summon the Nazgul to do away with whoever uses this dumb fucking appostive